i want you to hit me as hard as you can
sincerely yours the breakfast club who do you love
hi everyone welcome back to john hughes revisited this week we're staying home
with the kids as we take a closer look at mr mom a comedy about a family man named jack butler
played by michael keaton who loses his job and must become the homemaker
while his wife caroline played by terry garr returns to work to become the breadwinner
this leaves jack in charge of the chaos that is running a household with three children
similar to how national lampoon's vacation was based on his own family vacations as a child
mr mom was based on hugh's experiences looking after his two children in chicago while his wife
was away around this time out on the west coast struggling producer lauren schuler
donner then working at motown productions read an article national lampoon written by john hughes
and kept in touch with him one day john hughes told donner about his disastrous experiences
as a dad trying to take care of his little ones after donner found the story absolutely hilarious
he was asked if that could make a good movie and donna replied it sure sounds funny to me he said
i have 80 pages in a drawer of a script called mr mong do you want to read it and i said of course
and i read it and it was great hughes flew to los angeles to rewrite the script with donner
this was the second feature written by john hughes the first one being the critically panned national
lampoon's class reunion as hughes had a deal with aaron spelling he brought him on as an
executive producer but universal studios execs were unhappy that hughes worked out of chicago
and not la so they fired him um i'm fired and brought in a group of tv writers to remake his
script into a television movie cowards at some point the project moved to 20th century fox who
thankfully decided to turn the project back into a feature film which was a relief to donner as she
thought hugh's original script was far better so with production back on track using hugh script
it was time to find mr mom donner talked to her agent friend lori perlman who told her about
this really funny guy named michael keaton after meeting keaton and seeing his star-making role
in ron howard's night shift michael keane was cast as jack butler i could not wait to get out of the
theater and give mr mother michael keaton i just i mean he was so good keaton actually turned down
splash to do this movie because he was worried about being typecast funny enough ron howard was
asked to direct but he turned it down in order to make splash this was a big break for keaton
as it was the first time he received top billing and carried the movie squarely on his shoulders
other actors can serve for the role were robin williams john goodman george siegel michael
douglas steve martin john travolta and chevy chase who was busy filming hugh's other project at the
time national lampoon's vacation which you can also check out terry garr was cast as mr mom's
wife caroline butler gar revealed that when producers pitched the movie to her they hid
the plot reversal not sure why but apparently they just told her it was about a guy who does all the
work that a woman does because it's so easy and she wasn't completely convinced of the project
until she read the script other actors considered for the part were karen allen jane curtin farrah
fawcett and sally field martin mull was cast as caroline's egotistical boss ron richardson other
actors consider for the role were dabney coleman jack nicholson burt reynolds and jeffrey jones
who would work with hughes later on in ferris bueller's day off jeffrey tambor plays jinx
laithman keaton's sleazy boss at the automotive factory christopher lloyd has a minor role as
jack's co-worker larry miriam flynn who we know from hugh's other films such as national lampoon's
class reunion and vacation plays annette and jillian plays joan who not so secretly pines for
keaton's character edie mcclerg who often appears in john hughes films like ferris bueller's day off
and planes trains and automobiles has a cameo as the cashier in the grocery store are these
codex maxi pads on special nevermind sorry so with the cast in place it was time to roll the cameras
can i have a moment to myself please hughes was actually offered the chance to direct
but turned it down due to his preference of making movies in chicago not hollywood hughes even once
said that he doesn't like being around people in the movie business in hollywood you spend all of
your time having lunch and making deals everybody is trying to shoot you down he like to get the
actors to chicago where they can make their movies in privacy stan dragadi ended up directing
the film after hughes turned it down like hughes dragadi himself was an admin turned film director
co-writing the script for his debut feature the revisionist western dirty little billy with his
creative partner legendary admin charlie moss he helmed other films such as love at first bite
a spoof starring george hamilton as dracula the man with one red shoe starring a young tom hanks
and the football comedy necessary roughness all to varying degrees of success he would
later again partner with moss to create the i love new york tourism campaign unlike a typical
hughes film this one takes place in detroit michigan which makes sense giving the inciting
incident of jack being furloughed from his job as an automotive manufacturer similar to hugh's
other leading man that year chevy chase keaton was also very gifted in the physical comedy department
he would just keep coming up with ideas on the spot on how to make inanimate objects funny like
the washing machine and the chainsaw according to jeffrey tambor the shot of michael keane knocking
him out was done in one take also in the dream sequence where caroline arrives home to find jack
kissing joan and shoots jack keaton improvised the sip from the foaming beer bottle he knocked
over as he fell the floor and jillian can actually be seen struggling to hide her laughter even with
her back to the camera while this film doesn't have as many iconic hues music cues wow save
that five times fast as his lather films would it does feature classic film scores from rocky
and chariots of fire
which was also featured in national lampoon's vacation that very same year
martin mull was the one who came up with yeah 220 221 whatever it takes pitching it to keaton who
died laughing at the improvisation he said when i ask you how you're going to wire it just say
you know 2 20 2 21 whatever it takes killed me but you killed me i just thought this is hysterical
while keaton says he added whatever it takes the idea was all martin's
you had to do it
once production wrapped the film had a limited release of 126 screens on july 22nd 1983
earning the number 13th spot that weekend with 947 thousand and 119 dollars when it went wide to over
1200 screens on august 19 1983 it opened at number three with 4 million dollars behind easy money and
risky business it didn't take long before mr mom hit number one at the box office though and spent
five weeks at the top the film went on to gross just shy of 65 million dollars in the united
states making it the ninth highest grossing film of 1983. it also made more money than the other
hughes film that year national lampoon's vacation which was released in theaters the very weekend
after mr mom at the time the reviews were not kind to this film the reviews were horrible
they outdid themselves and and how much they could pan that movie but audiences were delighted by it
there are critics who believe the film's message was sidelined since the ending sees the couple
revert back to traditional gender roles instead of accepting the new dynamic and the understanding
that the rules are interchangeable both partners in the marriage are forced to take on unfamiliar
roles due to the unforeseen circumstances it doesn't matter who's at home and who's at work
as long as the family is together and at the time of its release hughes was still a relative unknown
as it would be another year before he completely reinvented the teen movie which would make him
iconic its success led universal to sign a three picture deal with hughes for 30 million dollars
which would lead to 16 candles the breakfast club and weird science this was one of the earliest
80s films about role reversal comedies with others being baby boom three men and the baby
and tootsie which also featured terry garr mr mom hit home for a lot of viewers as the economy
was on the downturn and more and more women were entering the workforce around this time according
to hughes someone once deemed him a purveyor of horny sex comedies due to this movie he's joked
what kind of sex yeah i missed her mom there's a baby in the bathtub and you'd see its bare butt
hardly the raunchy comedy that was more in line with a film like national lampoon's vacation
and once hughes took on directing duties for his own films we would see a more sensitive
introspective side to him with 16 candles being the first of many remember how studio
execs want mr mom to be on tv initially so a year after the film's theatrical run in 1984
mr mom was made into a 30-minute television pilot by abc except for john hughes credit for
the characters and stan dragadi credited for the story the cast and crew were entirely different
barry van dyke played jack and rebecca york played caroline it seems impossible to find
even a frame of this pilot but the review from the time stated that the characters and their three
kids are immediately likable but it goes downhill from there as the script lobotomizes all of its
characters and i quote here's a textbook case and how tv takes a cute idea and a script that does
have some good lines and leeches the wit out of it that wouldn't be the only tv adaptation of mr mom
in september 2019 voodoo the streaming service platform released their own version of mr mom
which was the platform's first original series it serves as a continuation of the film following an
adult megan butler heading back into the workplace while her husband takes over the parental duties
of their two children it stars andrea anders and hayes macarthur in the rules this time around
and judging by the pilot the show seems perfectly harmless trust me though no one will confuse it
for a huge film as it lacks the charm that he and the original cast brought to the film
it also doesn't help that the premise is much stiller in 2019 as opposed to 1983.
it probably would have been more interesting to have the working wife lose her job and return
home to take care of the children eh maybe maybe not you want something to drink like a
bourbon or a scotch or something like that found a beer
seven o'clock in the morning scotch it is amusing to look back now and think of the
pitch for this movie so get this the one who stays at home and takes care of the kids is
the dad pretty crazy right hell even the tagline cracks me up when mom goes to work dad goes
berserk jesus christ for its time though this film was ahead of the curve in 1983 more women stayed
at home than there were in the workforce so it was a novelty for a man to be a stay-at-home dad after
its release mr mom became part of the vernacular and represented a segment of men who were at home
dealing with the kids and up until then really hadn't been heard from that's the power of film
because it spoke for and to a lot of men not only did it speak to those embracing the mr mom moniker
it also helped women do the people taking housewives for granted and not appreciating all
the things they do to keep a household running the film made women feel better about what they did
because they knew that men were now understanding how difficult it is to control the chaos
this movie and the term mr mom itself have been referenced time and time again in films such as
meet the fockers you think you can take me flower man pretty sure i can miss them and tv shows like
stargate atlantis look who's back it's mr mom home of the kids hughes actually reused the
gag where jack drives the children's socks in a microwave in another movie of his uncle buck
nowadays stay-at-home dads feel like the term mr mom should be laid to rest
the national at-home dad network yes that is a real thing launched a campaign to terminate
the phrase and simply have people refer to men who stay at home as dad i guess i can see why
they would want to erase the image of an inept dad who wouldn't know how to order from a deli
seriously though jack never stepped foot inside a grocery store before all this give
me a quarter pound of cheese american blue cream cottage wait did they just say cottage cheese
who the hell is buying cottage cheese at the deli and you know what what kind of school has
two different traffic routes you're doing it wrong that just seems sadistic and okay sorry
i digress don't get me wrong this film is dated in a multitude of ways but according to donner that's
how hughes actually was while trying to be the primary caregiver he had never been to a grocery
store never operated a vacuum cleaner he just he was literally like an idiot with these children
and it was hilarious and for that ignorance we thank you mr hughes this movie has a lot of heart
and i'm particularly fond of the nods to classic films like rocky which rocky was it one or two
or three ah one i think i don't know in jaws in the end i give mr mom
four out of five wubbies and if you like what you're watching make sure you subscribe to
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you